The no-nostalgia generation
I’m writing this story on a MacBook about the times when computer had just arrived in India.
I should feel nostalgic but for some reason, I don’t.
I, along with a lot of others, from the group called the “millennials”, were born and brought up in the 90's. The times when the world had just started to change, at least for the Indian millennials. The computer had just arrived, India’s economy had just opened to the world. The future had started to get unpredictable. Predictions for mobile phone users by the end of the century were off by 99%. For my parents, it must have been like the world is turning upside down but for someone like me who had just started his life, this became the norm for the rest of the life to come. I waited all my childhood for a personal computer and by the time I could get one, computers had gotten more personal than ever. Before I could get old enough to go out and find myself a cab, Uber had taken over. And by the time I could own a car, it was a necessity rather than a luxury. The point is, throughout the course of my life, the world has been changing so much so that even the rate of change is increasing. The primary driver for it was, and still is, technology. This is exactly what made us millennials a no-nostalgia generation.
Putting this in the context of businesses, it looks like that technology has come a long way from facilitating businesses to killing them and now finally making new ones that one never thought would exist. Although I was a toddler when technology started assisting businesses but my memories are still afresh from when it started killing them. To be fair, it was nature taking its course and technology was playing the Darwin’s game with businesses. While some strived to get fitter, others were born fit and were more than just surviving. On one hand, even religious channels had to have their websites to reach more people, and on the other hand some businesses made profits while operating only online. To catch up with this ever increasing pace, the grumpy-old businessmen from yesteryears had to give way to young entrepreneur of today. This brought about a big cultural shift in the work environment. The monotonous routines from yesterday shifted to entrepreneurial projects from within the company. The tech savvy entrepreneurial culture had now taken over and businesses has figured out a way to be abreast with the continuously changing world. While the young entrepreneurs like to be challenged and prefer being called a CEO or Founder than anything else, the grumpy-old businessmen have settled with the title of ‘Angel investor’ these days.
Although, the world did change a lot but gradually we have been getting better at predicting what’s about to come. With the wounds from that last decade still afresh, the market soon realised it needs to be aware of the technologies of future more than those of today. But, since the advent of Artificial Intelligence, it seems like even the young tech-savvy entrepreneurs of this era have started to lag too. Predictions don’t make sense any more as the computer is learning faster than we can predict and suddenly it feels like those times again when the computer had just arrived.
The best way to go forth from here would be for people like me to take the driver’s seat and help bring about the next chain of changes. It is more important than ever for one to be tech-savvy now. Although, it might seem a little scary to shift one’s career towards technology amidst all the news about big companies firing big chunks of their tech staff and Trump barring people to enter in the USA but it’s just the Darwin’s game being played again. Soon enough, there would be a new wave of companies wanting to hire people who have everything or anything to do with technologies like AI, Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality.
The world has changed and will keep on changing, but what’s for granted is that it is going to be through technology.
